


(Re)learning to Live in this Skin

by Anonymous



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Female Friendship, Gen, Gen Fic, Insecurity, Missing Scene, POV Female Character, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:48:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29885499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After the curse is lifted and she’s in her Halfling body again - finally Veth and no longer Nott - Veth realizes she has to relearn how to live in this skin
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Nott | Veth Brenatto
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23
Collections: Anonymous





	(Re)learning to Live in this Skin

Veth gets up and steps over Jester carefully. Her tiefling friend is sprawled across the thin mattress and her mouth is hanging slightly open. She looks peaceful in her exhaustion — and she’s dead to the world, lost in her own dream world probably full of cotton candy-colored hamster unicorns. 

That’s lucky, because Veth feels clumsy, heavy, less nimble than she’s used to and was afraid she’d wake her with one awkward misstep. 

She’s still not sure if she can be an asset to this group now that she’s back in her old body; this body that she has longed for all this time... But it was more sturdy, still small but heavier built than the hated Goblin body she’d lived in these past years. As Nott Veth had learned to be useful - with her agile Goblin limbs and dexterity. Veth is a plump Halfling, who on top of that has to relearn how this body moves, balances, can be pushed to its limits. It’ll take time to feel at home in her own skin again. And all the useful things she knows about fighting and stealing and stealthing, all the progress she has made with the group - all of that Nott had learned, not Veth.

It’s the ultimate irony that she wanted nothing more than to shed Nott to be Veth again to find that perhaps being Nott hadn’t been all bad.

And she’s not sure what any of that means for Veth and the person that used to be Nott or what it means for her place with the Nein.

Previously she’d felt if she’d ever be her Halfling-self again, she would go home, live with Yeza, raise their son, cherish what she had come close to losing forever. At the same time, she has never fully believed a return to her old body was possible. Caleb promised over and over again and he had researched and never given up, because he’s Caleb, amazing, perfect, kind Caleb. He had wanted to help her from the start, even though it wasn’t at all sure it would be possible.

Back then, Nott had thought, _let him._ Giving him, this teenager in a man’s body, something to work towards, a noble goal beyond his own thirst for knowledge, a way to help him along as much as a way to keep herself hoping. It’s that love, that familial support, that melded them together.

She passes the room where Caleb, Fjord and Caduceus are sleeping, carefully not to tread too heavily and make the floorboard creak too badly. You never knew whether Frumpkin was keeping watch. And she didn’t want anyone to know she was sneaking out.

There’s a field of high grass not too far from the tavern they’re staying in. That’s where she’s going.

Nobody will see or hear her training there — and that’s that she wants. It’s the perfect place to shoot a few bolts, roll across the ground, jump left and right fighting unseen foes, to get a little workout and test her limbs without the group knowing she feels off her game.

She throws herself forward once, twice, catches herself on a knee — crossbow ready and aiming at a tree in the distance. 

Every motion feels terribly slow.

“Argh,” she shouts into the night and let’s herself fall backward into the grass. “Damn it.”

She’s glad to be herself again — but she hates _missing_ her goblin form. At least she’d known how to use the talents of that ugly green thing that Nott the Brave had been.

“I’m sure you killed some grass,” a familiar voice says and Veth shoots up into a sitting position, squinting into the night.

Beau hops down from the tree, vanishes into the high grass as she crouches down. 

“I was aiming for the tree,” Veth says without heat. 

She feels caught.

Beau appears again, closer, grass coming up to her chest where she’s walking and she pushes through to Veth. Veth’s crossbow bolt is in her right hand and she holds it out.

“What are you doing?” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Veth says defiantly. “You?”

“Couldn’t sleep either.”

“Why? Did Yasha look too sexy in sleep?”

Beau doesn’t flinch or shy back from the insinuation. In fact she winks. “When is she not reason enough to be distracted.”

Veth rolls her eyes. 

Then Beau throws herself into the grass beside her, arms folded behind her head.

“Weird times, huh?”

“Times? Weird for us? Not more than usual.”

“Much has happened,” Beau says as a way of explanation. 

Veth thinks about that. 

Beau is right. So much has happened from visiting Beauregard’s family and the baby brother she now had and had never met before, finding the hag who had trapped Veth in Goblin-form after she’d been drowned and lifting the curse… “We could have easily lost Jessie, there,” Veth thinks out loud and realizes she’s letting her tongue trace her teeth, unused now to them not being pointy. 

“Oh god, yeah, that could have gone all kinds of sideways. Didn’t though. For once.”

And she’s been with Yeza and had held Luc with these old-new arms once, briefly.

“How are you?” Beau asks.

“Fine,” she says — it’s like a reflex. 

Beau harrumps. It’s the Beauregard way of saying all kinds of things. 

“I am,” Veth repeats and immediately feels it sounds even more hollow the second time. “Different. It feels different.”

“Sure,” Beau says.

And that’s that. 

Beauregard. Master of words.

But right now, perhaps it’s exactly what she needed to hear.

Veth stares up into the night sky, crossbow still in hand and wonders if she’ll ever just fit in and be happy with herself whatever body she wears, whatever skills she can master. 

Then Beau sits up, reches down a hand to help her sit up and come to her feet. Veth feels awkward even accepting the help, and wonders if she can ask Beau not to tell anyone she’s been her out here missing obvious targets.

Then Beau kicks out in that one swift and well-practiced monk motion that Vet doesn’t expect or see coming — her legs are pulled out from under her and her eyes go comically wide, while Beau still has a deathgrip on her hand and keeps her from hitting the ground too hard. Veth finds herself staring up into the night sky again, Beau’s shit eating grin above her.

“Gottcha.”

“I hate you.”

Beau laughs, loud and heartfelt and pulls her back to her feet. She even takes a few steps away from Veth toward the tavern, leaving Veth to fume behind her back, before she unfastens her staff and starts whirling it with one hand. “Training’s better with two, Veth.”

She blinks. Nods.

“And just for the record. You were never ugly. You were never _not_ an asset. _You_ — whoever you are and whoever you choose to be. Just like the rest of us misfits, okay?” 

She blinks again. Nod. 

Beauregard is not the big talker, she’s not the sweet blueberry pie of mischief and emotion that’s Jester, not the careful kind boy disaster that's Caleb and she’s not the confusing adviser they have in their friend Caduceus — but she’s Beauregard. She’s seen shit, fought her way out of trouble with her fists, been called a failure and been made to feel not good enough for her own family. But she’s who she is now and she’s good at what she does.

All of them rely on her strength and recklessness and ability to use her Cobalt soul connections and research when she needs to. She’s anything but a failure. 

Veth can accept these words from her and with them this offer of help to figure herself out.

“Just till I feel like this is my skin,” Veth answers her.

“Whatever makes you feel better, darling,” Beau says and hits her on the shoulder hard enough to make her stumble. Veth takes the opportunity to kick her in the shin.

They jump apart, grinning, teeth bared. 

“No flirting,” Veth says. “I’m a married woman.”

Beau winks and tries to hit her with the staff. Veth jumps out of the way.

It’s going to be a rumble. 

Exactly what they both need.

Veth feels a little better already. Like she’s Veth Brenatto, brave Veth of the Mighty Nein — bot Veth Smyt'hh of Felderwin, not Veth, wife of lovely Yeza, not run-away Goblin Nott. She’s her own woman, an adventurer, part of a group of wonderful messed up people; a woman who loves her husband and son, but is not yet ready to give up this nomadic life of danger.

It’s good.

It’s fine.

Making up her mind, she vanishes into the grass and waits for Beau to jump after her, before Veth pounces on her in turn, making her stumble.

“Damn you’re fast,” Beau whelps, wind knocked out of her for just a second.

“And I’ll be faster,” Veth promises. 

She’s Veth Brenatto, she’s a mom, a wife when she’s with her family and a ruthless fighter when she’s with her other family, the Mighty Nein; she’s a sturdy halfling much heavier than a Goblin but still noble and dexterous; she has a gold ring in her ear that was “given” to her by a Goblin clan that was “hers” at the time — and she wears blue inked tattoos on her bronze skin that she would maybe not have born if at the time she hadn’t thought it wouldn’t ever matter. At least blue had looked shocking on her leathery green skin back then. But they were still a mark of a life she had lived. She was Veth and there would always be a bit of Nott the Brave in her, with her, on her, reminding her of those days. 

And as hard as it is to admit after everything she didn’t mind the bits of that scrawny Goblin girl being part of herself.

She’s Veth, she’s Nott. 

Perhaps she can live with that.

And if she can’t?

There’s no telling what she can grow to be next.


End file.
